Kyl Haselbauer has 20 years of experience working in fine-dining and modernist kitchens, including Bar Cotto and Anchovies &amp; Olives in Seattle. He is also the owner of Bright Spot, a café and coffee shop in Seattle.

Kyl Haselbauer

Cold-smoked salmon isn’t something that most cooks make at home. We get it. You’re used to picking up a vacuum-sealed package at the supermarket when you’re hosting a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/amazing-chewy-bagels-from-scratch">bagel</a> brunch. You might know it as Nova. It’s sometimes referred to inaccurately as “lox.” (If you find the terms confusing, check out our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/a-guide-to-cured-and-smoked-salmon">guide to cured and smoked salmon varieties</a>). Regardless of what you call it, smoked salmon is way easier to make than you might think, and it’ll taste way better than most of the stuff you find outside of a great appetizing shop. We came up with a recipe and method that produces the very best cold-smoked salmon, every single time. We speed up the curing time by sticking the side of salmon under weights while it brines. The weight, along with the denaturation of proteins by the salt cure, helps compact the flesh, giving it a firmer texture that’s more pleasing to eat and easier to slice. The weight also helps expel excess water, concentrating the salmon’s flavor.Our recipe gives you control over the salinity level in the final product, depending on how you’d like to serve it and <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cooking-salmon-everything-you-need-to-know">the kind of salmon you’re working with</a>. As written, it’s designed to transform a farmed salmon fillet into smoked salmon that pairs perfectly with bagels and cream cheese. If you want to serve the salmon all by itself, you can dial down the percentage of salt by weight from 3% to 2.5%. That same amount of salt also happens to be perfect for curing wild salmon before smoking; since wild salmon has less fat than farmed salmon, it doesn’t need as much salt to taste great when paired with cream cheese on a bagel. Once you see how easy it is to make stellar smoked salmon, you can start playing with the cure times, ratios, and smoke amounts to suit your taste, and you can get your thinly sliced salmon reps in.

Smoked Salmon (Nova)